Kallistos Ware on Catholic-Orthodox Unity

brother bishops fathers brothers and sisters friends let me begin my words this evening with two quotations one from an orthodox spokesman and one from a catholic speaking in 1968 the ecumenical patriarch athenagoras said today union is the Ananke our destiny and he added union will be a miracle but a miracle in history my second witness is Cardinal cernan's of Belgium who has said in order to unite we must first love one another in order to love one another we must first get to know one another taken together these two statements provide the motive and justification for the current Catholic Orthodox dialogue Union is the Ananke says patriarch athenagoras it is our vocation as followers of Christ we seek unity because it is Christ's will for what did our Lord pray of the Last Supper with his disciples a crucial moment immediately before his betrayal and death he would not have prayed on such an occasion for anything secondary or trivial and in fact he prayed for unity may they all be one we seek unity because it is Christ's prayer his desire his hope unity will be a miracle a miracle from the Holy Spirit the unity of the churches said Kolb art is not a manufactured article not a human product but a gift from God it is our task to remove the human obstacles that hinder this miracle it is our task to allow the spirit full freedom of action and we shall not remove these obstacles without love and mutual love in the fall and true sense will only be possible if there is mutual knowledge mutual fellowship love for unknown persons is not true love now the unavoidable conclusion from all this is that Union is not an optional extra it is fundamental and it is the responsibility of all of us not just of theological experts and church leaders but of the people of God the royal priesthood as some Peter calls it in its totality of the loss of God as a whole now there is an evident consequence from all this as divided Christians Catholics and Orthodox we should so far as possible do everything together in full cooperation we should only do apart what we have to do apart alas one of the things that to our deep sorrow we still have to do apart is the celebration of the Eucharist on both sides we recognize that the time for inter communion has not yet come now an example of the kind of cooperation of which I'm speaking is exactly this common declaration that we are to affirm tonight on the sanctity of human life to be read to us shortly this declaration is full of powerful and moving words may these words be followed by action this joint declaration is an indication of the degree to which Orthodox and Catholics share together a common heritage an indication of our closeness to each other now my theme tonight is the recent meetings of the joint international commission for theological dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church this commission was inaugurate in 1980 on the island of Patmos in the monastery of San John which is in fact the monastery of which I remember but I wasn't there in 1980 I've been a member of the Commission since 2006 and I've been present at full of the plenary sessions Belgrade in 2006 Ravenna 2007 pathos in Cyprus 2009 Vienna 2010 it is not clear when the next plenary session is going to take place now this International Commission as its title indicates involves the whole Catholic Church on the one side and the whole Orthodox Communion on the other there are other dialogues some of them here in the United States which involves one local church with another local church but this International Commission in principle is pan Catholic and pan Orthodox there are on the Orthodox side delegates from every Orthodox Church except the Church of Bulgaria which for some reason doesn't send delegates to dialogues nor in my experience do they ever answer letters on the Orthodox side however the Orthodox Church in America the OCA is not represented because it's autocephalous status has not been yet generally recognized throughout the Orthodox Church so what we have are about thirty delegates from each side a total of 60 there are two women on the Catholic side but there are no women on the Orthodox side let me share with you one vivid memory of the meetings I've attended at Ravenna there were police everywhere large numbers of priests in uniform outside the doors of the hotel where we were staying police along the road which we had to take to go from the hotel to the meeting place for our conversations please everywhere you couldn't cross the road without the police stopping the traffic to help you over and I asked myself why are there so many police everywhere is it to protect the Orthodox delegates from the people of Ravenna or is it to protect the people of Ravenna from the Orthodox I didn't find the answer but whether due to the presence of the police or for other reasons there were no troubles at all all the conversation proceeded smoothly but when we met a year later in Paphos things were different yeah the police assumed a low profile they were scarcely in evidence at all but on the opening day of our conference there was a demonstration outside the hotel where we were staying a demonstration of Orthodoxy zealots who were waving placards saying orthodoxy or death or we shall never submit or the Pope is Antichrist and I mentioned that because certainly within the Orthodox Church our dialogue is not always well understood many people think on the Orthodox side that we you engage in dialogue are going to betray the Orthodox faith are going to compromise and that is not at all our intention i sometimes wish these objectors would read the actual proceedings and then they would change their views at vienna the last meeting there were no priests had no demonstration I felt a little disappointed one other memory I can share with you is at pathos I was given this handsome briefcase which I take with me everywhere usually when you go to a conference the best you get is a little plastic pencil and perhaps a notepad but on this occasion we were all given something really useful by the Church of Cyprus and I note that this briefcase is extremely stout and solid it will last many years and probably it will need to do so because the dialogue is likely to take quite a long time now what is the crucial issue in our dialogue the last occasion when Catholics and Orthodox met at the highest level was in the years 14 38 to 39 at the council of Ferrara Florence on that occasion the two sides occupied some 10 months debating the procession of the Holy Spirit and the addition of the Filioque to the creed they devoted about four months to the subject of purgatory and the blessedness of the Saints but to the question of the papal claims they spent no more than 10 days towards the very end of the council when everybody wanted to go ten months for the Filioque ten days for the papal claims such was the order of priorities in the 15th century our perspective in the 21st century is altogether different in the eyes of most Orthodox and of most Catholics today the crucial pointed issue between our two churches is not so much the theology of the Holy Spirit but the position of the vision of Rome within the universal Church in the words of Cardinal Walter Kasper who until recently was president of the Pontifical Council for promoting Christian unity and he was co-chairman of our joint international commission for non Catholic Christians the papal ministry is the major hindrance on the path towards unity the main theological problem we now face he writes is our shared and different understanding of communion Keane onea his counterpart the Orthodox co-chairman of the Joint Commission metropolitan John as his yola's of Pergamum is in full agreement here historically he says the question of the papal authority and primacy has been the main cause for the gradual estrangement between the west and the East the question of primacy undoubtedly lies at the very heart of Roman Catholic Orthodox relations the ecumenical patriarch bartholomew is of the same opinion we have different ecclesiology as he writes and the place of the Bishop of Rome in the universal Church of Christ constitutes the principal obstacle it will be noticed that Cardinal Kasper metropolitan John and the ecumenical patriarch all speak of papal primacy rather than papal infallibility as constituting the chief difficulty between orthodoxy and Rome obviously the question of papal infallibility will also need to be discussed in our dialogue but there seems to be a general agreement on both sides that we should begin by discussing the subject of primacy but in fact in 1980 they didn't begin with that they wanted to adopt a new approach at the Council of Ferrara Florence the participants began by discussing the points of disagreement with the current international dialogue a different approach was adopted the members of the dialogue to borrow a phrase later used by Pope John Paul the second in his 1995 encyclical unum Sint desire to be open to a new situation they feared that if they were to commence as a Florence with the points of disagreement this would merely result in each party repeating well-worn arguments from the polemical arsenal of the past they began therefore not by considering familiar matters of controversy but by exploring possible areas of consensus so in the early statements from the dialogue there was discussed the significance of the local church the integral connection between church and Eucharist the meaning of communion Akeno Nia and it was only in 2007 at Ravenna that we began to confront the crucial question of primacy now in its agreed statement the meeting at Ravenna distinguished three levels of authority three levels of primacy first the local level the bishop in his diocese secondly regional primacy and for us Orthodox this means the primacy of the different patriarchs and the different heads of the Auto Care Phyllis churches and then at Ravenna they distinguished a third level of primacy universal primacy vested in the Pope now though this may not talk Catholic heroes seem very surprising in fact this represents something of a breakthrough in the past very many Orthodox have altogether denied this third level the universal primacy of the Pope they have considered the Pope simply as the most senior among the patriarchs as the elder brother as the first among equals but Ravana affirms that one should distinguish the position of patriarchs from the position of the Pope and in fact the Ravenna statement said quite explicitly the fact of primacy at the universal level is accepted by both East and West that affirmation was signed by all the Orthodox delegates at Ravenna in fact there was no delegation on that occasion from the Church of Russia but that was because of difficulties over the Church of Estonia it had nothing to do with the question of papal primacy now we Orthodox are very keen on emphasizing the importance of councils we emphasize Synod allottee but here the Ravenna statement follows out what was said on many occasions by the Orthodox co-chairman metropolitan John's azula's he has repeatedly said Synod ality cannot exist without primacy so the fact of primacy the universal primacy of the Pope was accepted at Ravenna by both sides but Ravenna did not settle the much more difficult question what kind of primacy I quote from the Ravenna statement both sides agree that there was a canonical taxes the canonical order recognized by all in the era of the undivided church further they agree that Rome as the church that presides in love according to the phrase of something nations of Antioch occupied the first place in this taxes or order and that the visual of Rome was therefore first protoss among the patriarchs they disagree however on the interpretation of the historical evidence from this early era regarding the prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome as protoss as first a matter that was already understood in different ways in the first millennium so the Ravenna statement concludes primacy at all levels is a practice firmly grounded in the canonical tradition of the church while the fact of primacy at the universal level is accepted by both East and West there are differences of understanding with regard to the manner in which it is to be exercised and also with regard to its scriptural and theological foundations so Ravenna reserved for the future the question how is the primacy of the Pope to be described but while it did not explicitly answer the question what kind of Prime see the Ravenna gathering offers us a precious clue it quotes apostolic Canon 34 now the Apostolic canons were not in fact written by the Apostles they date from the late 4th century in their present form and the 34th apostolic Canon has immense importance in the Orthodox understanding of the church it constitutes says Metropolitan Jones's ulis nothing less than the golden rule of the theology of primacy and this is what the 34th apostolic Canon says I'm sure some of the Orthodox clergy present know this Canon by hot no doubt some of them repeat it every night before they go to sleep but it's less well known in the Latin West the bishops of each province it says must recognise the one who is first among them and consider him to be their head and not do anything important without his consent each bishop may only do what concerns his own diocese and it's dependent territories but the first cannot do anything without the consent of all four in this way Concord will prevail and God will be praised through the Lord in the Holy Spirit there at the end you have the very important notion of the church as an image or icon of the Holy Trinity but notice the principle in this Canon it is that of reciprocity and mutual Concord now this cannon refers to regional primacy the bishops in each region and the chief bishop within that region to the second of the three levels that Ravenna distinguished but in the Ravenna statement it is hinted not stated explicitly that this cannon could also be applied to the authority of the Pope now notice the principle yes of reciprocity and mutual Concord that is affirmed in this canon the bishops are to recognize the one who is first and in a reunited Christendom there is clearly only one bishop who could be recognized as first the Bishop of Rome the bishops are not to do anything important without the consent of the one who is first but at the same time the one who is first is not to do anything without the consent of all so Ravenna suggests without stating it explicitly that here is a model for papal primacy the Bishop of Rome is first but he needs to act always in consultation with the other bishops it's not a question of one-sided domination with the Pope has the supreme ruler who issues ordinances while the regional primates the patriarchs the heads of the autocephalous churches and the diocesan bishops are submissively obedient on the contrary there is to be mutuality and co-responsibility the Bishop's cannot function without the Pope but if you apply Canon 30 for the Apostolic canons the Pope cannot function without the bishops now there are problems here at the first Vatican Council it was clearly affirmed that the Pope could act without the bishops and this was reaffirmed by Vatican 2 in the document lumen gentium as the prefere torre note of explanation states in that dogmatic Constitution as supreme pastor of the church the sovereign pontiff can always exercise his authority as he chooses whereas the Episcopal College it says acts only at intervals and with the consent of the head now this obviously is not the kind of reciprocity envisaged by apostolic Canon 34 and the Ravenna statement here is a matter that will require further clarification in our future discussions so all our difficulties are not in fact solved and of course the statement of Ravenna recognizing the universal primacy of the Pope has to be received by the various Orthodox churches and by the Catholic Church this process of reception at any rate on the Orthodox side is likely to take a long time that's why I need a very solid briefcase there's likely to be opposition to the Ravenna statement not least from monastic circles on Mount Athos but there may also be problems of reception on the Roman Catholic side from the Holy Office to adapt the words of Winston Churchill after the Battle of Britain in the second world war we are not yet at the end of our journey we are not even at the beginning of the end but perhaps we have reached the end of the beginning now since Ravenna we've begun to carry out the program indicated there to look at history what has been the role of the Bishop of Rome in the communion of the churches during the first millennium and that is not altogether a simple question to answer Catholics and Orthodox have different ways of interpreting church history even in the first millennium at a time of full communion between East and West though are already in the two halves of Christendom divergent manners of understanding the papacy and if I had time I would illustrate that by referring to the relations between Pope Leo the Great and the Council of Chalcedon the walls diversity of understanding in the first millennium regarding the ministry of the roof of Rome and so a question before us now is how far can we allow diversity today without impairing Eucharistic communion now we've prepared a working paper which was discussed at Paphos and at Vienna but it's not a very satisfactory paper most of us don't feel very happy about it and perhaps we should turn away from history because it's very difficult to agree about history and look more at theology again however if your theology is not based on history it is built on sand so what conclusion are we to draw from all this there is a Hindu saying the gods hate what is obvious and love what is obscure and that is probably true of our dialogue at Florence only 10 days were spent on the papal claims we are certainly going to need longer than that are we making progress yes but the progress is undoubtedly slow however we may recall the wise words of a notable Orthodox pioneer in the movement for Christian unity the Russian arch priest george florovsky he said the greatest equ manacle virtue is patience but i would like to add an impatient patience a patient impatience thank you you

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Keywords: Orthodoxy, Catholicism (Religion), Kallistos Ware (Person), Holy See (Religious Jurisdiction), Vatican City (Country), Pope (Religious Leadership Title), Autocephaly, Eucharist (Religious Practice), Anaphora (Prayer), Eastern Orthodox Church (Religion), Patriarch, Bishops, Gospel, Roman Catholic Church (Religious Organization), Papal Infallibility (Belief), Union, Jesus Christ, Dialogue, Eastern Orthodox -- Roman Catholic Theological Differences, Kallistos Ware (Author)

Id: ViiWV-D2eGI

Length: 36min 4sec (2164 seconds)

Published: Tue May 06 2014